How Gun Control Kills

And why death-penalty opponents should think twice about firearms bans.

Is there an evil worse than killing children? Is there anything more heart-wrenching than the feeling of absolute helplessness in our inability to protect them?

If Newtown, Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza had not taken his own life, millions would want him dead. Part of this tragedy is that the person responsible cannot be brought to proper justice. The entire event played out by his rules. The lack of justice compounds the loss of life. It makes the hurt worse.

It is these emotions—the high pitch of public outrage that accompanies the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting or any tragedy—that liberals say should preclude any possibility of the death penalty. But when liberals present rational arguments against capital punishment or demonstrate multiple instances where government has mistakenly executed innocents, such reasoning is often no match for society’s call for blood.

The calls for increased gun control after the Newtown shooting are also an emotional reaction. The same thought of murdered children that would naturally lead people to support the death penalty has also led politicians, pundits, and other Americans to clamor for more gun restrictions. This happens every single time there is a public shooting that becomes a national tragedy. But it’s demonstrably wrongheaded—and potentially deadly.

Gun control deters violent crime about as well as the death penalty. Worse, stricter gun control is the surest way to insure that virtually every would-be shooter is successful.

Two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary rampage, a gunman in San Antonio, Texas attempted to open fire on a movie crowd watching “The Hobbit.” Luckily, the man’s gun jammed. Even more luckily, there was an off-duty police officer who stopped that man with one bullet.

When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and five others were shot in Tuscon, Arizona in January, the man who wrestled the gunman to the ground before he could continue killing had a carry-and-conceal weapon. Said 24-year-old Joe Zamudio, who acknowledged that being armed gave him the confidence to tackle shooter Jared Lee Loughner, “I was ready to end his life.”

Here is a list of potential national tragedies that were prevented thanks to an armed populace (as compiled by the Libertarian Party):“A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school’s vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck; A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun; A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter; A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened; A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns; A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.”

These are just a few examples spanning 15 years. On December 11 a man opened fire in a mall in Portland, Oregon—that is, until he was confronted by another armed man who had a carry-and-conceal weapon. The gunman who had fired on shoppers then took his own life.

If the people who prevented these crimes through the use of personal firearms were legally prevented from having them—as many liberals now clamor for—America would very likely be remembering a dozen more national tragedies.

In an article for The Atlantic titled “The Death Penalty’s Enduring Emotional Appeal,” lawyer and author Wendy Kaminer wrote in 2011: “Support for the death penalty (like opposition to it) is generally more ideological than pragmatic… This means that people who favor executions don’t accept at face value abolitionist claims about wrongful executions, no matter how carefully they’re documented.”

The same is true of gun-control advocates. As columnist Thomas Sowell has noted:“The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago.”

That there really isn’t any way to predict or ultimately prevent these random tragedies—except, if you’re lucky, an armed person being nearby—is a basic truth liberals’ anti-gun ideology has blinded them to. Banning knives would not have stopped Jack the Ripper. Banning guns will not stop the crazed few who seek to open fire on the public.

To the degree that liberals get their way on gun control, there will be more deaths of innocents. I’m not saying liberals would want the potential murders implied in the examples here to occur. But what they want legislatively would only—inevitably—lead to more killing.

Jack Hunter is the co-author of The Tea Party Goes to Washington bySen. Rand Paul and serves as New Media Director for Senator Paul. The viewspresented in this essay are the author’s own.

Okay, so the deputy at Columbine was incompetent (not unusual among cops; they aren’t the gun experts many people assume they are) or just unlucky. I note that incident seems to be the only one of its kind that’s been going the rounds in the news.

“To the degree that liberals get their way on gun control, there will be more deaths of innocents.”

Naturally. It’s always the liberals’ fault. Especially when they – we – believe that there ought to be a difference between Western Civilised Society, and the security it implies without having to arm oneself, and the streets of Baghdad or the deserts of Somalia. Of course, just about everyone having guns there, and just about everyone calling for the blood of killers – and succeeding in gettng it, and succeeding as a result in expanding the cycle of revenge and blood – has not quite resulted in safer cities or schools. But why let good evidence go to waste, when you can blame liberals for more gun killings if there are fewer guns loose in the country.

Josh, are you: (1) saying that the deputy’s failure to deter the assailants indicates that armed response to violent criminals does not work, or (2) are you saying that other armed people at the school would have helped the situation, or (3) are you saying something else?

Mr. Hunter has made a case against repealing concealed carry laws. But isn’t there a bit more to gun control than restricting concealed carry, or even banning weapon types outright? Concealed carriers are not commandos (mostly), but they are the cream of legal firearm owners in that they’ve passed generally more extensive background checks with local LE than the FBI check performed at purchase, are registered as concealed carriers with the state, and have demonstrated at least basic proficiency with their weapons in live-fire states.

Yet extending all of those requirements to all firearms owners would be a non-starter with the extreme gun rights organizations.

Why does the hardcore pro-gun side insist on beating up this idea that any action making gun-access more difficult is equivalent to the gubmint rounding up all our guns? This isn’t going to happen, politically or practically. If you really want to make a case for what could happen, show us how we’re safer with high-capacity magazines, online ammo buying, and gun-show exemptions. How many crimes were prevented (vs the mass-killings enabled) by these policies?

These are good anecdotes that clearly show that having a ‘good guy’ with a gun can prevent more murders in these specific situations.

I think the question ulimately remains though: Is the total amount of gun-related murders that would be prevented by restricting access to firearms, or even just certain kinds of firearms, higher or lower than the number of gun-related murders that would occur because the ‘good guys’ can’t shoot back?

Maybe this question can’t be answered in any definitive way, but I think the focus that this article puts on anecdotal evidence based solely on mass-murders (a rarity
compared to the total number of gun related murders), avoids the nub of the issue.

Also, assuming the validity of Hunter’s argument, this says nothing about restricting access to firearms and firearm accessories that have nothing to do with self-defense. These types of legislation, when done right of course, would have no effect on the ability of ‘good guys’ to procure a proper means of self-defense.

Is it gun control, or just control the State wants? If ordinary citizens did not have guns our FedGov would be able to do what the British couldn’t. Control America in anyway they wished.

For liberals, this argument is just a way to make them feel good, or give them a superior attitude. They don’t need guns, but live in well protected areas, or have bodyguards armed as if they are going to war.

The State and libs don’t care that people living in rural and high crime areas need guns for protection since the second responders are 20 – 45 minutes away. The first responder is the victim and they need guns, or their at the mercy of a lunatic who will kill, rob and rape no matter how many feel-good-laws are passed. Not that more victims are their concern. All the State, libs and media want are control, a holier than thou attitude and more tragic stories for better ratings.

Mr. Hunter’s argument is woefully undeveloped. Yes, some or even many mass shootings were stopped by private citizens with guns. But that doesn’t mean that allowing widespread gun ownership would lead to fewer deaths. After all, widespread gun ownership means it would likely be easier for enraged antisocial people to acquire the tools necessary for mass murder. That Mr. Hunter does not even consider this possibility makes his argument one big non sequitur.

Researchers using careful methods claim to have shown that owning a gun makes a person much more likely to be a victim of gun crime. This conclusion is consistent with the common-sense notion that owning a gun raises the stakes for would-be criminals and entices them to use a higher level of force than would otherwise be necessary to achieve their criminal goal. It’s unclear whether Mr. Hunter’s solution of “more guns” would actually lead to fewer conflicts. But it’s very clear that his solution would raise the mortal stakes of these encounters.

That claim cuts both ways. You argument is, basically, that those of us who would carry guns should allow the context of our lives and sense of liberty to be determined, on the one hand, by those who do not want to carry and, on the other hand, by those who will carry contrary to the laws and toward evil ends. Until the kingdom comes, the context of our lives will always be determined by those who bear arms. And when you ask those who bear arms illegally on what authority they do so, they will do as the centurion did seeking to extend Caesar’s consulship: “when he heard that the senate would not give Caesar a prolongation of his term of office, struck his hand upon his sword: ‘But this will give it.'” Our lives will be determined by those who have arms, the real question is whether we will maintain any sense of liberty in the face of this fact.

The purpose of the Second Amendment is to arm people in order to prevent future tyranny. They need the tools to do this.

The term “Well Regulated” in the Second Amendment meant “Well Manned and Equipped ” in 1791 as was determined in the 1939 United States v. Miller case after referencing the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The concept of Government Regulation, as we understand it today, did not exist at the time.

United States v. Miller also determined that the term “Arms” refers to “Ordinary Military Weapons” (not crew operated). American Citizens have the right to Keep and Bear, which means Own and Carry, any weapons that a soldier carries into battle. That includes past, present and future weapons. A Militia consisted of armed volunteers willing to fight with their personal arms and not under government control.

To limit the Second Amendment to muskets would be the equivalent of limiting the First Amendment to writings in quill pens.

You base your argument on the claim, “Gun control deters violent crime about as well as the death penalty.” But you don’t provide any evidence to support the claim. You also don’t clarify what you mean, leaving us to assume you refer to violent crimes in which guns were used.

Country comparisons indicate this is false. Those are not perfect evidence, of course, but they are strong enough so that you cannot make such a statement without support and expect us to take you seriously. If you’re aggregating violent crimes that do and do not involve firearms, you’re attempting to mislead your audience.

In my country Australia there was a mass killing in Tasmania (our smallest state) in 1996. Our then Prime Minister- the leader of our conservative coalition, and a personal friend of G W Bush (both before and after he became president) enacted stricter gun control laws; notably no hand guns and no self loading or automoatic guns. There has not been a mass killing since.

The same is true for Dunblane in Scotland where the gun laws were enacted by the Tories.

Gun control saves lives. The evidence is in every other country but your own because you do not have gun control.

This should not be a liberal v conservative issue. It is about public safety, in which all Americans have a stake. The gun insanity in this country is amazing.

The 2nd Amendment was written in a time of single-shot flintlocks. The “well-regulated militia,” integral to that 2nd Amendment, were disciplined local organizations, whose members were subject to conscription, and also to court-martial for defying orders. The militia were community organizations for collective defense against organized incursions or insurrections. The Constitution even gave Congress the explicit authority “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Those “well regulated militias” of single-shot weapons are long gone, replaced by paranoid individuals seeing themselves as an army of one, hording weapons of mass murder with zero accountability to the community.

The NRA proposal that more guns everywhere will prevent more mass murders is truly insane. Here is the likely scenario: every restaurant, amusement park ride, post office, convenience store, grocery, doctor office, church, library, nightclub, symphony hall, theater, day care, retirement home, hospital, sport arena, public park and beach, gym….all become war zones. Here’s how: guns everywhere, and somebody decides to commit mass murder. An armed citizen on site kills the perpetrator, another armed citizen on site arrives to save the day a few seconds after it starts, and shoots the vigilante because he thinks that was the original shooter. Another armed citizen sees him shoot the vigilante and therefore decides he must be allied with the original shooter and thus must also be killed. Pretty soon everybody has their guns out and is shooting everybody else with a gun out of fear which is the original shooter? How does the NRA propose to make sure a population armed to the teeth in every public and private place are all able to judge the good guy from the bad?

This is what I mean by the insanity of America’s gun culture. The reason so many people are killed by guns in this country every day is because they are so easy to get. There is no way to vet out every potential killer beforehand.

The personal militarism approach to society has become a deep problem of American culture, it is sick, and it leads to another mass murder every few weeks, plus lots of single murders in between.

Time to drastically rethink guns. We will never shoot our way out of our problems. Time to think deeper about how we build a society where people feel connected and where human life is respected. Time to go back to the Constitution and realize the “right to bear arms” was not an individual right but rather a state right to keep militia and bearing arms was explicitly connected to membership in a “well-regulated militia.”

So here is a draft law to return us to Constitution and sanity:

1) Require membership in a well-regulated militia for those owning guns designed to kill people (anything not a single shot hunting rifle or shotgun). Only militia members, submitting to all the discipline inherent to a state-regulated militia, would be the armed protection at schools or any other public place.

2) Buy out all the multi-shot weapons owned by persons who refuse to join a militia and submit to its discipline, including conscription and court-martial for failure to follow orders. We could do this with something compared to the Federal Reserve’s “Quantitative Easing” program, a “Firearms Easing” program. The biggest problem is only law-abiding people would turn in their mass murder weapons; the answer is to consider how much are such weapons worth even to gang-banger thugs? The answer is these people are mostly poor, and using their weapons for crime doesn’t pay well. Entice them with more than crime’s wages, say $1000 per handgun and $2000 per semiautomatic rifle.

3) Solutions that rely on “mental health” institutional commitments will never work because it amounts to a pre-emptive arrest based on fear of the future, before a crime has been committed. There are paranoid, angry, depressed, psychotic people all around us, you can’t remove them all from society because you are afraid of them.

First of all, a ‘penalty’ concerns retribution for a violation of justice against another. It is important that a society be willing to insist that certain unjust violations, the intentional killing of another who has no intention of harming the agent, deserves, and can receive, the ultimate physical penalty, the forfeiture or loss of one’s own life.

Without that insistence or the courage to stand by it, one erodes the distinction between murder in the 1st degree and other actions that result in death or harm to another.

Whether the threat of said retribution deters this or that specific agent is, without the direct testimony of said person, an unknown. But that retribution (which is not mere revenge) be confirmed is a necessary aspect of justice and right.

To argue that unequal applications of such a penalty may or do occur is to point to a distinct issue, and different acts of injustice that ought to be remedied.

As for the Constitutional acknowledgement that any citizen who wishes can bear arms, we should not overlook the fact that the desire of citizens for more and more technologically advanced weaponry is a natural result of their aspiration to be protected from governments that equip their militaries and agencies with such.

It is governments, typically, that have laid the ‘egg’ of constantly advancing weaponry’s abilities to have effects that are exponentially disproportionate, quantitatively and qualitatively, to what would have been imagined in centuries past.

Perhaps, if this tendency were reversed, we would also witness a reduction in the desire, and the need, for citizens to possess comparable capacities to defend themselves and the Constitution.

Regardless, for all of those who wish to concoct elaborate restrictions on the vast majority of citizens who manifestly abide by the laws and a sense of natural justice towards others, in order to supposedly neutralize a small minority of aberrant persons who do not and will not do so, your objectives are distorted and your reasoning about the means to attain them are fallacious.

“That there really isn’t any way to predict or ultimately prevent these random tragedies”
–yes, that is why they are called ‘random’

“—except, if you’re lucky, an armed person being nearby—
is a basic truth liberals’ anti-gun ideology has blinded them to. ”
–true, but this begs some questions, ‘would we want to live in a society where all/most/many are armed?’, ‘would we want to live in a society where some NEED to be armed to go about our daily activities?’ i think not. it may be true that armed law abiding citizens would be able to stop some shootings, but at what social cost? it is the immorality or insanity of some members of gun culture, or the immorality or insanity of some types of gun culture that needs to be addressed.

“Banning knives would not have stopped Jack the Ripper.”
–you can’t know that

“Banning guns will not stop the crazed few who seek to open fire on the public.”
–you cannot know this either.

“To the degree that liberals get their way on gun control, there will be more deaths of innocents.”
–could be, but not necessarily ‘will be’

“But what they want legislatively would only—inevitably—lead to more killing.”
–again, could lead to, NOT ‘inevitably’ lead to.

Ditto Peter Kirsopp.
There are many fallacies in this piece (beginning with the ad hominem at the start – as if only liberals advocated gun control), not least ignoring hard evidence from non-US jurisdictions where gun control has been implemented.

Forget the liberal vs. conservative arguments.
Let us only consider statistics:
US odds of being murdered with a gun 1 in 32,000.
Germany 1 in 500,000.
Japan 1 in 1,000,000.
What do these numbers say? Are US citizens are more violent than Germans and Japanese? Do they have more armed guards in German and Japanese schools? Do Germans and Japanese tend to carry more conceal weapons to protect themselves? Do Germans and Japanese play less violent video games?
These are all ridiculous questions. So what is the difference?

In reading through your examples, all the citizens who stopped crime were armed with pistols. None were armed with concealed assault weapons with high-capacity magazines.

This begs the question: why does the NRA fight so hard for one’s right to carry a deadly military assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine? Clearly, a handgun is the armed citizen’s concealed weapon of choice.

Following this logic, we can easily restrict the madmen’s weapon-of-choice, without affecting our self-appointed guardians’ ability to guard us.

I think I’m on your side, but you are ignoring the numbers. The school shooting is obviously on everyone’s mind. This is sadly a recurring tragedy, but the overwhelming number of murders are caused by handguns not assault rifles.

People feel safer with a handgun in their house, but that handgun is much more likely to cause an accident that kills someone at home than it is to guard you from a crime.

Sigh. At Will: First the Constitution is not and never has been about technology. Othewise freedom of the press would only cover newspapers printed on Gutenburg presses and TV, radio, and the newspapers printed using computers would not be covered. The Constitution is all about the relationship between the government and the governed.

The militia clause is a dependent clause which does not restrict the rest of the sentence. But notice that every time “people” is used in the Bill of Rights it means an individual not a collective right. To Madison who wrote all of them everyone was a member of the militia and you did not have to be a formal member of one to own a gun. Find a quote by any of the Founders that says otherwise. You can’t.

Gun control and crime. Gun control was originally enacted in Great Britain not to control crime but to control people in the 1920’s. It was in response to the Russian revolution and the British government did not want the British people doing the same thing. The murder rate was already low and gun control had no impact on that.

People who look at countries like Great Britain conveniently ignore Russia and South Africa which have very strict gun laws but much higher murder rates than the United States. No one can really point to a strict co-relation around the globe to gun control and murder rates. But in any case comparing murder rates across national boundaries is like comparing apples and durians. It ignores differences in languages, cultures, legal systems and so much more. All these make a huge difference and to say that the availability of guns and guns only is the deciding difference ignores all the other factors which in fact may play a much bigger role.

In the Washington DC area there was a much more valid comparison. You had DC with very strict gun control, the Maryland suburbs with less gun control, and Northern Virginia with the least amount of gun control. All next to each other, no geographical issues, no language, cultural, or legal system differences. According to gun controllers including people writing here like Peter, DC should have had the lowest murder rate followed by Maryland followed by Northern Virginia. The exact opposite was true of course. DC had the highest followed by Maryland with Northern Virginia being the safest. In fact the DC’s murder rate was 30 times higher than Northern Virginia even though they were separated only by a river. This was by far the best side by side comparison you were ever going to get.

Now Peter and you other gun controllers in the group, explain this if you will. Well the guns were smuggled from Virginia was one explanation. As Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America said, what are these magic guns that become 30 times more deadly when they cross the Potomac River? No.

Gun control hides the real problems. The black murder rate in this country is 6-8 times higher than the white murder rate. This in large part due to the fact that the illegitmacy rate in the black community had gone from around 20 percent in the 1960’s to almost 80 percent now. You want to impact the crime and murder rates in this country then quit worrying about the objects and deal with the people themselves starting with those out of wedlock births.

“In my country Australia there was a mass killing in Tasmania (our smallest state) in 1996… enacted stricter gun control laws; notably no hand guns and no self loading or automoatic guns. There has not been a mass killing since.

Gun control saves lives. The evidence is in every other country but your own because you do not have gun control.”

———————–

The first part is a misrepresentation and the second part is false. Kinda sad that you don’t even know your own country’s history.

Monash University shooting – 2 dead, 5 wounded. Shooter had 6 handguns. The mere fact that the shooter was incompetent doesn’t mean this wasn’t a serious effort towards a mass killing – and your gun control laws did nothing to prevent it. If the shooter had been competent, then at least 12 would have died.

Since you used the term “mass killing”, I’d also refer to the Childers Palace fire. 15 dead. Sure, it wasn’t guns, but the people are dead anyway. If a nutcase wants to kill people, there are other ways to do it. Did your government move to outlaw matches? Why not?

You also said “the evidence is in every other country”. Really?

Is that why Russia has 1/10 the number of guns as the U.S. but a murder rate that is between 4 and 7 times higher than in the U.S.?

If you’re going to be honest, you should also point out that murder rates in Australia actually went up for awhile after your gun laws were passed. True, you’ve had a drop in murder rates in the last 3 years, but then, so has the U.S. About a 15% drop in murder rate in the U.S. in the last 3 years – and the current rate in the U.S. is significantly LOWER than all but one of the 10 years when the Assault Weapons Ban was in place in the U.S. from 1994 to 2004. How do we explain a LOWER murder rate with all of these assault weapons around? Hmm?

Both Australia and the UK have historically had much lower rates of murder than the U.S. – BOTH before and after the gun laws passed in both the UK and Aus.

Then there’s the ineffectiveness of the ban in the UK at actually reducing the total number of murders. See here:

“This begs the question: why does the NRA fight so hard for one’s right to carry a deadly military assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine?”

Do you suppose a pistol is more or less deadly than a “military assault weapon”?

Those “military assault weapons” you refer to are nothing more than semi-auto rifles which LOOK like military weapons. Some of them were banned in the U.S. from 1994 to 2004 – then the ban expired. The U.S. murder rate is 15% LOWER now than it was in 2004.

Peter Kirsop – you obviously are not a statistician when you post this:

In my country Australia there was a mass killing in Tasmania (our smallest state) in 1996. Our then Prime Minister- the leader of our conservative coalition, and a personal friend of G W Bush (both before and after he became president) enacted stricter gun control laws; notably no hand guns and no self loading or automoatic guns. There has not been a mass killing since.

How many such mass killing occurred BEFORE 1996. Unless there is a large enough sample size to show that the ban had any real effect then all you have is just another anecdote. Hardly something one should point as proving that some law was effective.

“the fact that the desire of citizens for more and more technologically advanced weaponry is a natural result of their aspiration to be protected from governments that equip their militaries and agencies with such.”

There is no such fact but a delusion of gun lovers.
A delusion deriving from the delusion that the Framers intended the 2nd Amendment for the purpose of safeguarding a (hypothetical) right of the citizens to rebel against the Govt.

The wording of 2nd Amendment says no such thing but points to the safeguarding of the State. Where are the Originalists of the Right?. Where is the Original Intent?
Standing armies were not envisaged in 18th C and nor was police. The armed citizanary was essential to the safety of the State.

Phelps,
“Is it gun control, or just control the State wants? If ordinary citizens did not have guns our FedGov would be able to do what the British couldn’t. Control America in anyway they wished”

The gun owner, complying with all regulations, Federal, state and local, pertaining to his self, family, business and property, fondly imagines himself as the bulwark of liberty.

Control America in any way they wished?.
Are they not doing it already and getting away with it?
They can split your family, forbid you from seeing your children for ever, forbid you from modifying your property, they can do what they want in schools, impose a gay-friendly or creationist syllabus, and much much more.
And what you as a gun lover going to do about it?

@Gian: The impetus for automated weapons and research for more efficient and power weapons has typically been to gain an advantage of central governments over other governments, usually in order to impose the will of the first on others.

You are simply wrong when you accuse those of delusion who read the 2nd Amendment as a safeguard so that the citizenry could and would not be subjected to tyranny by those who obtain governmental power, and then you go on to say an ‘armed citizanary (sic) was essential to the safety of the State.’

And by the way, so-called ‘ideas’ promoting liberty are forged by free human beings, and to prevent being subjected to bondage requires that those who wish and who are capable of using such should be able to have the means (weapons) to maintain their liberty.

The problem is not with those, the vast majority, who have such weapons and never have, and never will, violate laws or natural justice against others.

Rather, it is with those who opt for aberrant acts, whether due to incompetency or criminal malice. And I am sure folks like robwbright can supply statistics that support this fact.

Focus on finding solutions to preventing criminals and the mentally ill from getting ahold of weapons. But do not try to argue against the Founders’ intention to limit the state so that the citizenry might be free.

Not cherry picking at all. The comparison is made to developed democracies. Honduras and Russia just doesn’t qualify as and apples to apples comparison.

Since I haven’t gotten a response let me post the numbers again. What is the difference between us and Germans, and Japanese. How can we get our murder rates down to their levels:
US odds of being murdered with a gun 1 in 32,000.
Germany 1 in 500,000.
Japan 1 in 1,000,000.
What do these numbers say? Are US citizens are more violent than Germans and Japanese? Do they have more armed guards in German and Japanese schools? Do Germans and Japanese tend to carry more conceal weapons to protect themselves? Do Germans and Japanese play less violent video games?
These are all ridiculous questions. So what is the difference?

The United States has an intentional homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants of 4.2%. Germany’s rate is .8%; Japan’s is .4%.

So, no, it is not unreasonable to infer that Americans are indeed more violent — at least more homicidal — than Japs and Germans. Most of these murders were not committed en mass, and so could easily have been perpetrated using a blade, a bludgeon, poison, whatever.

Hello Nathan, I didn’t assert that the Constitution is “about technology” but rather that the firepower of 1791 was vastly different, that mass murder could hardly be committed with single shot weapons because the shooter would quickly be disarmed by the crowd.

Also, regarding the 2nd Amendment term “the people,” I disagree with your argument it meant an individual right, and I have already said above it was a state right to maintain a disciplined militia as first line of collective defense against organized insurrections or invasions.

The shooter in the Pearl, Miss. case was not stopped until after he heard police sirens and fled to his car. The principal did nothing to stop his shooting spree at that school.

It was said his intent was to go to the Jr High and continue his killing spree. If this were true, and the cops were dumb enough to not send officers to the Jr High as well as a safety measure when they received the call about the shooting at the High School, then perhaps it can be said that the principal stopped the killer. Whether it was because he had a gun pointed at him while he drove away may or may not have been the reason he crashed his car.

That said, in all the cases you mentioned, the good-guy carrying a weapon was only carrying a small hand gun, not an “assault” level weapon. Training, a cool head, and the intention to do good turned their small personal firearm into a weapon capable of stopping a mass murderer.

All pathetic bla bla bla bla. Address the statistics or just be quiet.
US odds of being murdered with a gun 1 in 32,000.
Germany 1 in 500,000.
Japan 1 in 1,000,000.
What do these numbers say? Are US citizens are more violent than Germans and Japanese? Do they have more armed guards in German and Japanese schools? Do Germans and Japanese tend to carry more conceal weapons to protect themselves? Do Germans and Japanese play less violent video games?

dear rowbright, you wrote:
“…the Childers Palace fire. 15 dead. Sure, it wasn’t guns, but the people are dead anyway. If a nutcase wants to kill people, there are other ways to do it. Did your government move to outlaw matches? Why not?”

yes! however, psychotic killers may want to kill using guns, that may be the kick/satisfaction. a gun may provide something that a fire, knife, hammer etc do not. it may not just be ‘killing’ but ‘killing with a gun/hammer/knife’ etc. that the killer is after. this idea points to the fact that it is a CULTURE that we must address, the culture of mass killing with guns and its satisfaction. yes, it may be rare, but the effects of those rare incidents are devistating. the use of the atomic bombs was rare………..

Actually, what your stats seem to show, is that a more ethnically homogenous society is less likely to engage in violent crime. That is just as valid an inference from the stats. Unless, of course, you have stats showing the overall murder rates are comparable, regardless of method. Where are you getting your stats, by the way?

John Lott wrote a scholarly, well documented book entitled “More Guns, Less Crime,” which highlights, via statisitcal analysis of crime data for every county in the US from 1977 to 2005, a decrease in violent crime in areas with liberal gun laws (i.e. concealed carry).

Chicago, my hometown, has some of the most strigent gun control laws in the country. And the city had 500 homicides in one year (2012).

“stricter gun control is the surest way to insure that virtually every would-be shooter is successful.” The reason for that would be that there would be fewer shootings and far, far fewer guns.

And this article appears to have missed the point that if the “bad guys” (the potential killers) don’t have guns, then the “good guys” (members of the public and the police) will not need guns in order to protect people.
You will of course get shootings. But arming everyone is not the way to do it.

The Newtown killer used an assault rifle. NO ONE IN THE USA HAS ANY NEED FOR AN ASSAULT RIFLE. You can’t hunt with it, you can’t carry it as personal protection that easily, and you certainly can’t conceal it. A lot of armed forces don’t use them because they see them as pretty useless.
Ban assault rifles at least.

Of course more government is not the answer to a government created problem in the first place, aka Gun Free Zones. However in all of this debate, I don’t hear a lot of people talking about how the creation of government schools themselves is in part to blame. Firstly, is it really such a great idea to corral children all together in one place where would be killers can conveniently find so many together. This is not to mention the culture rot that the government schools have contributed to over the decades. I predict home schooling will continue to see an increase, and rightly so.